Friday, August 13, 2010

Oh, Please! Wall Street Journal Elitism

In this weekend edition, we take some gratuitous pot shots at wine snobbery. But not just any wine snobbery, Wall Street Journal wine snobbery. Big thanks to Tom Johnson at Louisville Juice for turning us on to this gem.

On the heels of an article sub-titled "Finding the right red for grouse-shooting season", the WSJ seeks to further ingratiate itself with readers with this piece on haute etiquette. Writer Lettie Teague enters the elitist fray writing about her instruction of an unsuspecting dinner companion on the right way to hold a wine glass:"Holding the glass by the bowl just didn’t look very nice. It’s much more elegant to hold it by the stem."

3 comments:

I am dying with laugher! Reminds me of a NYT article where a reader asked about what good restaurants would fit in a budget of $150 per person. They responded with: if you're spending $150, why the hell not spend $300?!

Complete disconnect with American culture. I mean, seriously, when's the last time you've thought, "God, what I'd do for some roasted grouse..."

You pose a timely question. When is the last time you've thought, "God, what I'd do for some roasted grouse..."?

I was on the phone with my brother this weekend, who, coincidentally, is a wing shooting fanatic (we're still trying to figure out which of us was adopted). He had called to chide me for cracking wise on the grouse. "Ha", I replied. I guess there is one WSJ reader out there who didn't find that piece so ridiculous.

But notice that he wasn't calling because he needed to know what wine to drink with his grouse. Why not? Well, for starters, grouse season is months away. And, secondarily, he already knows what goes well with grouse:

Heh, it pleads to logic that if you are actually one of the few hundred out of six billion that hunt annually for grouse, chances are that you probably already know damn well what to drink with it. Hence, why that article is even more elitist than previously thought.